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Welcome to Jan's Weblog

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Here's what's going on in our family!

Sat, 14 May 2022

May 2022 Cathedral Gorge and Fossil Canyon

I have been wanting to take a trip back to Cathedral Gorge to try to take some star pictures. Thomas agreed to go with me and we took the three hour drive on a Friday night after he got off work. We arrived late and spent several hours taking some pictures. In addition to trying to learn the techniques, we hadn't counted on how cold it would be. We were at about 4000 feet elevation and had only brought light jackets. We managed to get some pictures of stars, but there was no moon and so we couldn't get the rocks in the foreground to look good. Plus, the Milky Way didn't appear until after we were in bed and by then we were too cold to take more pictures.

After a very cold, mostly sleepless night, we got up to explore the area and take a few more pictures before driving home. We will want to go back and try it again, maybe when there is a moon so that we can get better pictures of the rocks with the stars.

This weekend, the family went on a hike to Fossil Canyon. It's in Red Rock, so only about a half hour away. We went early, while it was still cool and had a nice hike.

We took pictures,

and looked for fossils,

and climbed on rocks,

and it was a nice morning.

posted at: 22:09 | permanent link to this entry

Mon, 18 Apr 2022

More from Hawaii…nature pics

I posted earlier the main things that we saw and did in Hawaii. But I also took lots of pictures of birds and trees and other nature that I wanted to save somewhere. So here are just pretty or interesting things that I saw.

I couldn't do justice to all of the interesting trees that I saw. Once when I was trying to frame a large tree in an interesting way by trying to frame it with a plant nearby, I noticed a gecko in my picture. I didn't see it until I was done taking the picture. So I took one with the gecko in focus.

red bananas

brown kelp in the tidepools

berries

sea urchins that look like space aliens

yellow tang in the waves

just leaves

And lots of misc pretty

In retrospect, this one was probably an invasive species that I should have killed, but I like snails when they are not eating my garden and I was on vacation…

OK, gotta stop now. So many pictures…I've still got lots more.

posted at: 13:25 | permanent link to this entry

Hawaii

Marc and I went to Hawaii to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary.We had talked about going for quite a while and booked the trip nearly a year ago. It was fun to anticipate going. We decided on the big island because of all the variety and we were not disappointed because there was a lot to do and see. Here are a few highlights. Of course, I took lots of pictures and think that I will post a summary of our trip here and some other pictures in a future entry.

The flight was long and we flew to Honolulu first. Because of this, we got to see Pearl Harbor from the air so that was nice. Our flight to Kona was delayed and we were very tired of traveling when we finally got to the condo.

The first day, we explored the north part of the island. We saw the little town of Hawi and had lunch at a cute restaurant.

And drove to the end of the road to see some pretty scenery.

I was impressed the whole week with the variety and beauty of the palm trees. They are so different than what we see in Vegas. I don't like palm trees in Vegas, but they were so beautiful in Hawaii. I kept trying to figure out the difference. One difference is that we don't have coconut palms.

The next day, we went out on aboat and did a major snorkeling expedition. We went to three different sites. It was a good day and we got GoPro pictures of the reefs. They all look a little like this.Only with fish swimming around in them. And sometimes Marc or I would swim into the scene.

One of the things that we really wanted to see in Hawaii was the volcanoes. Kilauea is active and so we wanted to see that especially. It took us two trips across the island before we could really see what we wanted because the first time it was too rainy and cold. That first time we detoured to Hilo and explored a park there, went to a planetarium show (meh… winking and walked to a couple of falls. Here are some pictures of those trips.

A black sand beach in the south.

Rainbow falls without a rainbow.

Akaka falls and the hike to it. Lots of pretty scenery here.

And finally the waterfalls…

And more pretty scenery on the hike back.

A plover in Hilo.

And flowers everywhere.

So, it took a couple of days, but we made it back to the volcano to see it by day.

I don't know if you can see it, but this is a rainbow over the caldera. It was still rather misty at times this day. And on the left side of the picture is the old observatory for the caldera. The volcano erupted in 2018 rather spectacularly. The caldera collapsed when the lava went flowing out and covered about 700 homes and expanded the island some more. The visitor center has some rather spectacular videos of this. But the resulting collapse, damaged this observatory and so it was roped off and closed.

We could visit some steam vents and a nearby lava tube.

And later that night. The hike was cold and long to the viewing site and we were accompanied by a lot of other people who came to see this rare sight: a lava lake at night. So cool! or rather hot.

The rest of the week was just relaxing and hanging out on the beach and seeing more beautiful scenery. I will post a few more pictures here to finish off and then do another post later with my some more excessive pretty pictures. We had a great time. Let's do it again.

This is the beach we could walk to from our condo.

A school to learn to surf…

And our last Hawaii sunset…

Worth recording several times. It was a good trip.

posted at: 10:37 | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 18 Jan 2022

Meeting with family

I went to visit Mom over the long weekend and enjoyed meeting some cousins and an aunt who I haven't seen since I was little. We visited all day, shared family stories, and really enjoyed catching up.

Mom with Edith Wayment (my aunt).

And with cousins, Roland, Mark, and Joan Wayment.

And with Wayne and me.

posted at: 20:58 | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 01 Jan 2022

December 27 Valley of Fire

Marc and I went to Valley of Fire together to celebrate our anniversary. (30 short, blissful years!) It was a nice day. We enjoyed exploring together and then drove back via Overton. Later, we went out for a nice dinner.

Here are some pretty pictures of rocks.